Sometimes it's hard to blame them

Every time me and my family finish hearing mass at Sto. Domingo and as we approach the car, there is always an instance where a street kid would beg for alms, wherein my dad / mom / me would usually say "patawad po". But just a while ago, my dad said something different. Instead he said, "kahit ano pa gawin ninyo, wala kayong makukuha sa amin." Probably my dad said such because of the constant nagging of the street kid to us, begging for alms.

At that certain point, my mind was saying to me to tell the street kid (and thank God I did not tell that to the kid), "'WAG KA HUMINGI SA AMIN. SISIHIN MO YUN MGA MAGULANG MO KUNG BAKIT KA GANYAN."

I know it's very discriminatory, rude, unjust, *insert negative adjective here*, but reality hurts alright. No wonder there are a lot of poor people these days. Why?

Here are some facts (just as so you know);

1) Haven't you noticed that families of upper classes have less kids, while those from the lower class have more kids?

2) Haven't you noticed your jeepney / tricycle / taxi driver being sober and drinking lots of alcohol and smokes more sticks, despite having limited funds?

3) Haven't you noticed that even if poor people have a lot of kids, they still make more (it does sound rude though)

4) Haven't you noticed that in squatter's area, the children just wander around the streets, and their parents not there to take care of them?

5) Haven't you noticed that in churches and streets, you see more kids begging for alms than poor elderly people begging for alms?

6) What other else have you observed?

I may seem to be acting like some rich kid bastard bashing on the poor, but face it: sometimes the problem lies on the poor people themselves, and not in society. Think of this: for example, you are in a situation of a typical poor man / woman, what would you do? John Gokongwei didn't started out as a rich person; he was a poor man back in his teenage days who work hard to become what he is now. It is a similar story my lolo would always tell me on how my great great grandfather, Leonardo Sr. (so by now you know more or less why I am Leonardo IV, ok? :D), started out. My great great grandfather started out as a poor man, and just like Gokongwei, he worked hard so that his future children / grandchildren will have a good experience of life, like what my family is experiencing as a normal, middle class family.

In my opinion, the problem of the poor Juan dela Cruz is the very fact that he would not put in effort to get out of his poverty situation. Instead, he'd just stay where he is, ask help from the government, and blame the government if they don't get any. I know GMA recently has not been making any good pro-poor projects yet, but sometimes, the poor people of our society should also act up on their situation as well. They cannot get everything for free, they can't get subsidies everyday, they can't be fed everyday by the government; they should also do their part, which in this case is the problem.

In relation to this, I was thinking about the reliability of the Reproductive Health bill as a means of controlling our population, in particular, the population of the poor. as Ex-Guidoneer / Katipunero Czar Medina told us in our Sociology class, she was shocked to see how a poor family living underneath an overpass have ten kids (yes, ten kids, and the wife's pregnant at that time Czar was interviewing them for a show . . . is it for the Correspondents?), cramp up at that diminutive space, yet they still manage to have sex in that small, cramped space while their kids are sleeping. Then the husband answered in filipino, "of course, if there is a will, there is a way".

What the RH bill is addressing basically is to discipline the people of having sex and having too much children, and yet the Church is against it because of it being "killing of life" aka abortion. Well I would seem to disagree (this is just my personal opinion, mind you), since what the RH bill is saying is to control the contraception of a newborn, not killing the fetus while it is inside the mother's womb. In other words, the RH bill is more on "population management", not murder or abortion as the Church would think of. I believe that we all have to be practical now because of our alarming population, (hence a tendency of breaking traditions), but on the hindsight, I think that whether the Church is for or against the RH bill, the RH bill would eventually fail. Why? Because only the middle and upper classes would conform to it and not the lower class. Even with the RH bill, I doubt if the poor people (or even those from the middle to upper class) would care to practice family planning or use a condom during sex to prevent contraception. Well that's where the Church is right. What people lack here is discipline, which is something that can be only corrected by the person himself, not by some bill made by the congress.

Believe me, population control is a problem that is unsolvable, just as poverty is. It would take a person to change him/herself before the problem can be solved, which seems to have very little odds.